


Musings at the Morgue

by pulpriter



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 00:35:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4766894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pulpriter/pseuds/pulpriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mac’s reflections.<br/>Series 3 spoiler regarding Mac’s place of work</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musings at the Morgue

**Author's Note:**

> I found this abandoned in my files—not sure why I abandoned it, except that it doesn’t really fit anywhere in the series. You decide. 
> 
> I don’t own these characters, I just love them.  
> Please comment and review.

Dr. Elizabeth MacMillan was carefully cleaning and storing the tools of her trade. The morgue was quiet—serene—as she had expected it to be when she accepted the job. But it was not always so. Each time a body was delivered to her, she waited with bated breath to see if she would shortly be visited by a whirlwind, in the persons of her dearest friend, Phryne Fisher (the Honourable, no less) and Detective Inspector Jack Robinson. 

Any time those two were in the room, volleys were constantly fired back and forth across her quiet morgue. Sometimes badinage and repartee were the order of the day, so fast and challenging it took all her concentration to keep up with them; sometimes it was sharp words dripping with sarcasm and thinly disguised frustration.  
Mac wished they’d get it figured out.

When Phryne had returned to Melbourne, Mac had known that her quiet life would never be the same! That was no surprise. Mac was constantly finding herself pulled by Phryne into the midst of yet another conundrum. She couldn’t say that she really minded; it was a kind of heady fun that came from associating with Phryne. It had always been so. 

Mac hadn’t expected the added dimension of Senior Detective Inspector Jack Robinson. At first, Mac had taken him to be like all the rest—another man unable to resist being pulled into Phryne’s frenetic orbit. It wasn’t until later that she slowly realized that, if the Inspector wasn’t naturally involved in a case, Phryne would find a way to draw him in. This was new, and led Mac to look at the Inspector with new eyes. 

Mac had once called the Inspector “brilliant”, and she had meant it. She didn’t bandy that term about blithely, and working more closely with him had only confirmed it to her. She respected his careful, methodical work; his attention to policy and procedure; his long view of public perceptions and politics; and even his knowledge of his own limitations within the law. It was quite a counterpoint to Phryne’s hunches, leaps of intuition and occasional wild surmises. 

Mac saw something else, too. The Inspector, whether intentionally or not, challenged Phryne to be the best she could be. Their unspoken competition was less a rivalry and more a match of wits, bringing out the best in each other through their vastly different styles.  
Phryne had once told Mac, after many drinks, that when she came to a crime scene and enumerated all the clues she found, she suspected that Jack had already discovered most of them—in fact, once Hugh slipped and said so. The Inspector didn’t need her help, any more than Phryne needed his.  
It’s just that they were so much better together. 

 

Of course, it was about more than solving crimes; there was always that undercurrent. If they could just work out that other side of things…

Mac reflected on the two of them. Two broken people, who didn’t think they were broken. Two broken people, hiding the brokenness: one by losing himself in his work, one by losing herself in her play. Both had ended up losing. But it was clear to Mac that when they met, both began finding themselves again.  
At first she thought it was the mysteries that Phryne solved that brought her back to life, and that was part of it. Phryne needed to have a purpose, and she had found one. Mac hadn’t really been paying attention to the Inspector’s part in all of this, until suddenly he was always there, if not actually in the room then as the regular subject of Phryne’s conversation. This was so outside of Phryne’s usual _modus operandi_ that Mac assumed it would burn out like so many of her wild hairs. But she had watched Phryne and the Inspector growing closer and closer, drawn together like magnets, opposite sides attracting, and yet more the same than opposite. 

Once she started paying attention, she was surprised to see what really happened when they interacted. Phryne was accustomed to being treated with kid gloves, as an object of beauty to be admired, acquired, and enjoyed for as long as she would allow. But Jack Robinson didn’t play that game with her. He challenged her intelligence, he let her have her say, he didn’t back down, and he gave as good as he got. What’s more, Mac began to see the humor that ran between them. Phryne teased, of course; but wonder of wonders, so did the Inspector, and he was able to keep up with her. Sometimes she came out on top, sometimes it was him: but it was never long before the victor was toppled by the other. 

Once Mac had thought the Inspector a coward when it came to dealing with Phryne. Seeing them together on a regular basis had led her to wonder about that. Phryne surely led him on a merry chase— sometimes lately, she seemed determined to be more brash, more trying, more wild, more of everything. Mac had developed a feeling that it wasn’t Inspector Robinson who was the coward, after all. Phryne was perversely doing everything she could to scare him off, because she herself was scared.

Mac was jolted from her musings; a commotion in the hallway alerted her that a body was about to be delivered. Once it was, she set about her well-practiced routine for examining the body, and was just thinking about beginning the Y-cut when the whirlwind once again found its way into her morgue—but this time, it was more of a refreshing breeze.  
What was new? Could they have possibly figured it out? 

Dear Lord, they must have. Phryne was simply sizzling with smug feminity, and the Inspector exuded a calm confidence. Their banter was the same, they still teased, challenged, piqued and provoked as they considered what they knew and what they needed to know; but the ever-present electricity sparking between them seemed to have leaped to a higher voltage.  
Here was a story! Would Phryne tell it? Over the years, Mac had heard a spate of amazing stories about the men Phryne had brought home—each more amazing than the last, Mac sometimes thought. She often wondered if they were entirely true, but knowing Phryne, they might very well be. Would this time be any different? How much would she admit? 

Mac’s impish side took over. A ladies’ night was needed, for sure—with plenty of good scotch.  
And soon.


End file.
